OUR VIEW: Local governments still Have a prayer

Published: Monday, May 12, 2014 at 03:27 PM.

The U.S. Supreme Court last Monday did not chip away at the wall that separates church and state. It ensured that the barrier was not made unnecessarily high.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that sectarian prayers before government meetings do not violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Previously, the court in 1983 had upheld the practice of opening public legislative meetings with prayers that offered a general appeal to a deity. Monday’s decision affirmed that prayers that are more explicitly religious, such as those that invoke Jesus Christ, don’t cross the threshold of constitutionality.

The case involved the town of Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, which began its council meetings with prayers recited by local Christian clergy — primarily because the vast majority of churches in Greece are Christian. That practice offended two meeting attendees — a Jewish woman and an atheist — who did not share the majority faith, so they sued to change the prayers to become more “inclusive and ecumenical” and to refer only to a “generic God.”

The court wisely declined on appropriately narrow grounds.

The tradition of opening government assemblies with a prayer — which the court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, notes goes back to the nation’s founding — has become a largely symbolic exercise that aims to solemnize the proceedings and set a civil tone, not establish a state religion. You rarely find one that spits fire and brimstone, proselytizing to nonbelievers and threatening them with eternal damnation if they don’t repent — because such a prayer would violate the court’s 1983 decision in Marsh v. Chambers. Rather, even ones that invoke Jesus or Allah usually do so to ask that they provide wisdom for the assembled officials and justice for the people, etc., what the court called “universal values” embodied in the nation’s founding documents and laws.

The Greece prayers were not coercive. Thus, the plaintiffs’ rights were not violated, as they were not forced to participate nor were they condemned — and because there is no constitutional right not to be offended.

It is important, though, that governments not be discriminatory and exclusive in their prayers. The volume of certain sectarian prayers may reflect the prevailing faith of a community, but governments cannot deny a request from a minority belief to deliver its own invocation. To that end, when Greece’s prayers initially were challenged, the town sought out other denominations to deliver the pre-meeting prayer, including a Jewish layman, the chairman of the local Baha’i tem¬ple and a Wiccan priestess.

The U.S. Supreme Court last Monday did not chip away at the wall that separates church and state. It ensured that the barrier was not made unnecessarily high.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that sectarian prayers before government meetings do not violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Previously, the court in 1983 had upheld the practice of opening public legislative meetings with prayers that offered a general appeal to a deity. Monday’s decision affirmed that prayers that are more explicitly religious, such as those that invoke Jesus Christ, don’t cross the threshold of constitutionality.

The case involved the town of Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, which began its council meetings with prayers recited by local Christian clergy — primarily because the vast majority of churches in Greece are Christian. That practice offended two meeting attendees — a Jewish woman and an atheist — who did not share the majority faith, so they sued to change the prayers to become more “inclusive and ecumenical” and to refer only to a “generic God.”

The court wisely declined on appropriately narrow grounds.

The tradition of opening government assemblies with a prayer — which the court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, notes goes back to the nation’s founding — has become a largely symbolic exercise that aims to solemnize the proceedings and set a civil tone, not establish a state religion. You rarely find one that spits fire and brimstone, proselytizing to nonbelievers and threatening them with eternal damnation if they don’t repent — because such a prayer would violate the court’s 1983 decision in Marsh v. Chambers. Rather, even ones that invoke Jesus or Allah usually do so to ask that they provide wisdom for the assembled officials and justice for the people, etc., what the court called “universal values” embodied in the nation’s founding documents and laws.

The Greece prayers were not coercive. Thus, the plaintiffs’ rights were not violated, as they were not forced to participate nor were they condemned — and because there is no constitutional right not to be offended.

It is important, though, that governments not be discriminatory and exclusive in their prayers. The volume of certain sectarian prayers may reflect the prevailing faith of a community, but governments cannot deny a request from a minority belief to deliver its own invocation. To that end, when Greece’s prayers initially were challenged, the town sought out other denominations to deliver the pre-meeting prayer, including a Jewish layman, the chairman of the local Baha’i tem¬ple and a Wiccan priestess.

The court, however, wrote that the Constitution does not require a town “to search beyond its borders for non-Christian prayer givers in an effort to achieve religious balancing.” The local government merely needs to be accommodating to all faiths and beliefs that request the opportunity to deliver an invocation.
Monday’s ruling strikes an appropriate balance regarding the exercise of religion in the public square, one that is consistent with the nation’s founding principles and practices.

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